Crying over spilled... Gumbo?

Okay, so the Gumbo isn't literally spilled, but I thought the idiom-reference was fitting considering how tedious this topic actually is.


The classic: Don't cry over spilled milk.

I was researching criticisms on the movie The Princess and the Frog and I found an article on Buzzfeed that says Disney created a Kale Gumbo-- directly in accordance with their overwhelming desire to market any and everything that they can from their films-- and apparently, people were offended.

Disney's version of Gumbo.

The article featured snapshots of tweets and Facebook comments that pretty much entailed the black community stating how completely misguiding-- and potentially disgusting-- Kale Gumbo was. Essentially they're correct; in no way is Gumbo a meal that calls for kale as an ingredient. I mean, who even eats kale? Quite honestly, I didn't even know what it was until about a year ago, BUT I'm not going to call for Disney's (theoretical) head on a platter for deciding to make Gumbo out of it.

This is apparently what chopped Kale looks like.

My opinion is that people only called out Disney for its Kale Gumbo for entertainment purposes. Twitter users often times make fun of ridiculous things just to gain thousands of retweets and follows. So, I don't think anyone actually took Disney's gumbo to heart. However, the tweets, Facebook comments, and wall posts were enough to make Disney delete its recipe and try to pretend it never happened. That didn't work, of course, because as our parents beat into our brain-- once it's out there, it's there to stay.

What really gets me about this entire situation is that Disney felt like they had offended people so heavily that they decided to take the recipe down. But seriously... it's just a meal. Technically it's a meal that strongly connected to the culture of New Orleans, and it does have meaning and purpose in that sense, but people make spin-offs of recipes all the time. No big deal. I do see how Kale Gumbo could be offensive. Essentially Gumbo is a staple in the minority community of New Orleans, and to add kale to it would be to basically gentrify it and allow for Upper-middle class, white Americans to consume it. (Because let's be honest, they're the only people who eat kale.)

New Orleans Style Gumbo

Even then, I still don't agree that it's a big enough deal for all the harassment Disney got. I guess that's just a reflection of the oversensitive generation that we live in????